Health supplements do nothing but damage your wallet: Clinical expert

Sales of supplements have grown by six per cent in five years, with Britons spending an estimated £442 million on them in 2018

Monday February 4, 2019 1:06 PM, ummid.com News Network

London: The majority of supplements sold on the high street are so poorly designed that they 'cannot be effective' and taking them in capsule form gives no additional benefit, a former Government advisor has claimed.

Dr Paul Clayton, a clinical pharmacologist, said most firms making the products use cheap ingredients which have little scientific proof.

In a scathing attack on the multi-million pound industry, he said the only effect they have on consumers is rob them of their hard-earned money, MailOnline reported.

"This is a problem for most high street supplement brands, as the majority are so poorly designed that they cannot be effective", he added.

"They use untested, unproven and lowest-cost ingredients. Of all the vitamins, the multi-vitamins, omega 3, vitamin C tablets and the like, there is no evidence to support any of them. The one thing they all have in common is they don't work and have no evidence to support them. When you put any of these things to test, they don't do anything", Dr Clayton, who was advised the UK government's now defunct Committee on the Safety of Medicines in the 70s, said.

"These products are being sold by companies who don't really know what they are selling, and being bought by customers don't really know what they're buying. But it doesn't really matter with nutritional supplements because they don't really do anything anyway – only to the consumer's wallet", he added.

Sales of supplements have grown by six per cent in five years, with Britons spending an estimated £442 million on them in 2018, according to market research group Mintel.

Roughly 34 per cent of British people take health supplements daily, while the figure in the US is closer to the 50 per cent mark, according to a study published in JAMA.